Distraught Conditions
by HarmonyLover
Summary: A continuation of the closet scene in episode 6.16, "Draught Conditions." What if Donna and Josh had been able to talk out their anger right then and there? Rated T just to be safe.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing related to _The West Wing_; it all belongs to NBC, Aaron Sorkin, et al. I write these stories purely for enjoyment; no copyright infringement is intended.

**Author's Note:** I wrote this after a long "West Wing" marathon where I was reviewing key Josh and Donna episodes. The very first part is taken from Episode 6.16, "Draught Conditions," in which Josh and Donna end up in a closet. The real scene ends after Josh says, "The President." I thought there should have been more. It really seems to me that this is one of the last moments in the series where Josh and Donna are their old selves, even with the tension between them. This story was my attempt to resolve the tension, and have an earlier happy ending.

**Distraught Conditions**

Donna sighed. She wasn't looking forward to this conversation; she and Josh had been so strained since Gaza, since she had quit. He was hurt and so was she, and there was so much left unsaid that they had nothing to say to one another that didn't have to do with politics.

Even then, the conversations were brief.

She spotted Josh on his cell phone in the lobby of the West Wing, talking determinedly to one of his campaign people about the Sunday shows.

"What do you mean we're not on 'Meet the Press'?" he said indignantly. "No, no, no, no. Call them back; talk to Elise Bain. Tell her they're not bumping us for Ricky Rafferty."

Donna strode up behind him with papers in hand. "Hang up."

"Tell her the Congressman is available tomorrow only; Rafferty can wait."

"Hang up _now_," she said firmly, getting in front of him.

"Keep your pants on," he said to her. "Call me back," he said into the phone before flipping it shut.

"I'm going to put a hit out on Ricky Rafferty," he said in irritation.

Donna grabbed Josh's arm and kept walking, pulling him out of the lobby. "I need to talk to you, not with a million people around," she said urgently. She strode purposefully to a hallway closet, opened the door, and pulled him into it. It was completely dark.

"Is our relationship about to change?" Josh asked lightly. Donna felt her heart jump a little. There it was, just a touch of the banter she'd been missing so much. But there was a more important issue, and he needed to know about it fast. She pulled on the light cord, giving them some light to see by.

"Rafferty put out the full text of the health plan; Annabeth had a copy. Look at page three."

"'Obliterate the money-laundering middle man between you and your doctor.' Why didn't every article lead with this?" Josh said in puzzlement.

"It wasn't in the first speech. They released the whole plan today; it guarantees them another three days of coverage. Look how it's structured."

"It's structured like Jed Bartlet structured it before we forced him to cut it out of his plan."

"Rafferty's got to have someone who worked on the President's first health care initiative. That was you, Toby, Sam, Melanie, Ken –"

"You missed one."

"No, who'd I miss?"

"The President," Josh said solemnly. He looked straight into her eyes as she absorbed the implications of that, really looked at her as he hadn't since Germany.

Donna returned his gaze, taking in his appearance even while they traded theories with their eyes. Despite all of the anger she felt, it made her heart ache to look at him. He looked so tired. He had looked tired since before Gaza, he had looked utterly worn while he was at her bedside in Germany, but now there was a hardness to his face that had not been there before. His bones seemed more chiseled, his face more determined and more closed off than she had ever seen it. He was risking his entire political career with Matt Santos, and he knew it. She recognized the absolutely uncompromising stubbornness in his expression. Whenever he happened to look at her, however (which wasn't often, since he never seemed to want to meet her gaze, as though he was afraid of what she might see, or what he might see), there was pain, so much pain and betrayal. Those feelings were there now, in his brown eyes, even while his political mind was working a mile a minute with the new information she had brought him. Her Josh, the cocky, taunting, humorous, boyish Josh that she loved, seemed to have vanished somewhere between Bartlet's second inauguration and the disaster with Senator Carrick. Then again, she felt wounded by him to an extent that she never would have believed was possible a year and a half ago.

"The President would never do that, Josh," she said gently, trying to ease the tension in his face. "You know that he would never do it. Not for Ricky Rafferty. If he was going to do something so compromising for anyone, it would probably be you."

Josh gave a short nod, but his eyes flickered away from hers for a moment, and Donna could have sworn that the President had done _something_, even if it was a small something. Josh wouldn't tell her that, though, and he would be right not to.

"Thanks for this," he said, moving his eyes back to hers. "I appreciate it. At least where Rafferty's concerned we're still on the same team." His voice was more bitter than appreciative at the end, and Donna flinched. His words still managed to injure her.

He attempted to move around her in order to exit the closet, but Donna stopped him on impulse, moving her body in front of him and placing a hand on his arm.

"Josh," she said quietly, fixing him with a steady gaze, "we've been avoiding this, but I have you for two minutes right now and I want a chance to speak. We used to know each other well enough to communicate a great deal without words, but that's been seriously damaged since – " she paused, not finishing, but Josh knew what she meant. He mentally braced himself. "For once in my life I am going to _verbally_ tellyou everything, and hopefully that will help repair us a little."

Josh's face was carefully guarded; he wasn't going to give her any help, but at least he wasn't walking away. She knew that this might be their last chance to mend their friendship; what few chances they might have left were running out. She couldn't hope for anything more. If she didn't speak now, they would both leave, they would both continue campaigning, and the next time they ran into each other on a campaign stop, or working in the general election instead of the primaries, the ice would have become so thick that they would have to take a hatchet to it, and their relationship would never be the same. It was already changed, and changed drastically, but not to the point where it was unrecognizable. Donna didn't want to rebuild it from scratch; they had done too much for each other in the last seven years, through the campaign and nearly two terms of the Bartlet presidency, to just abandon that history. She started talking.

"I didn't leave to make you angry, or abandon you, or because I wanted to hurt you. You canceled half a dozen lunches with me when I was trying to have a conversation with you about why I was leaving, why I felt I needed to move on with my career. You shut me out. I left because I wanted to do more than be a glorified assistant, and I couldn't see that happening as long as I was working for you."

Josh looked at her, and Donna could see antagonism coming to the surface again. "I wanted you with me."

"You wanted your assistant with you, Josh," she retorted, her voice sharp.

"I wanted _you _with me, Donna!" Josh exclaimed, and his voice did that thing where it rose through the roof in frustration. She had missed that; she cherished it even now when his resentment was being directed at her. "I wanted you, and I sent you to Gaza as a way of trying to give you something new, some new way to develop your talents, and you almost got killed the one time I let you leave my side!" His eyes were haunted now, and the terror on his face as he relived that possibility was agonizing for Donna to see, but she needed to make her point. If she let this go, nothing would ever be repaired or altered between them; he had to understand that she needed her independence even though she loved him.

"You were humoring me, Josh, because you hoped I would stop bothering you and stay and keep your life together. Anyone could have done what you wanted me to do on that assignment – I could have done what you wanted the first year I worked for you. Do you have any idea how patronizing that is?" she said, glaring at him. "And when you came to Germany – and I was thrilled, and – humbled - and _grateful_ that you were there, Josh, really I was, because I was so incredibly scared and the one person I really wanted was you – but you came to Germany and you stayed with me and you held my hand and you still couldn't actually _say_ that you cared about me as anything other than your high-ranking secretary!"

Donna's voice hadn't started out loud, but by the end of her speech she was shouting, and Josh's eyes widened in shock. She never raised her voice to him, even when she was angry. The fact that she was doing it now spoke volumes about how upset she really was. "Damn it, Josh, before I left for Gaza, the night of the lock-down, I was in C.J.'s office and she said to me that if you had cared about me, if you had really cared about me, you would have let me move up after our second year in office, you would have been happy to see me advance and do well. And I didn't want to believe her, but I knew she was right, because you somehow can't manage to function without me, and yet you endlessly take me for granted! You could have let me go the night of the second inauguration, too; there would have been a job for me in the administration somewhere. I was so happy that night because it seemed as though you had finally started to see _me_, all of me."

"You looked so beautiful that night," Josh murmured, his eyes on her face. A great deal of what she said was true, and he knew it. He felt completely ashamed that he had appreciated her so little; as his friend, if nothing else, she deserved more than that. His shame and guilt had contributed to the tension between them, too. He had been selfish, horribly selfish, but he hadn't been able to imagine the office without her, and crossing over any other lines would have brought up a hoard of difficulties. But she was right; he could have let her go, let her advance on her own, and he hadn't. He hadn't put her first, as she always seemed to do for him.

"I wanted to cry when you said that, then," Donna said, her cheeks flushing. "I felt incredibly beautiful when you looked at me, and I felt as though I would just burst with happiness, and I thought everything would finally be different with us. But it just went on the same as before. You were still my boss and I was still your assistant, and I couldn't so much as hug you without it being inappropriate." Her voice was shaking with emotion, and for a moment Josh saw the love in her face, but then the anger came back and her voice rose again. "As long as I was there to schedule your meetings and not bring you coffee and make sure your tie was straight and that you had clean shirts and you went to every meeting with all the right information, that was all you needed! It apparently never occurred to you to consider how I would feel about permanently being in a low-ranking position, or that I might want to spend my life doing work that was a little more fulfilling! Or just maybe that I didn't want to be your assistant anymore because I wanted to be something – _someone_ else for you."

Josh's face opened up at that; the hard, shuttered look went away and was replaced with the boyish openness she remembered, suffused with an almost painful hope. "Donna . . ." He reached out to touch her face, but she turned away from him, her fists clenched.

"The night that Zoey was kidnapped I was in the bullpen with Amy Gardener. She was drunk and we were talking, and she asked me if I was in love with you." She didn't see the shocked expression that crossed his features. She had never mentioned this, and Amy had certainly never told him.

"Amy asked me if I loved you – brilliant, gorgeous Amy, who seemed like a perfect match for you politically, even though I never thought she really understood you, and who I knew you cared for – and I couldn't deny it, so I didn't say anything. I sat there and tried for the thousandth time to come to grips with the fact that you didn't care about me. _Amy_ could see how I felt about you, Josh – but if you felt anything at all for me then beyond friendship, I certainly didn't know it. I _hoped_ – but I had been hoping for so long."

The distress in her voice was overwhelming, but she was wrong about part of it at least, and she should already know it. "I did care about you!" Josh said, irate again in his turn. "I've always cared about you, and you know that! I made sure no one could touch you in that horrible thing with Cliff Calley; I backed you up and made sure you wouldn't get fired from that _stupid_ quote Jack Reese gave to the press, even though I thought you were crazy for covering for him! For God's sake, Donna, I flew halfway across the world when we had an international terrorist incident on our hands because I was completely incapable of doing my job, because the only place I wanted to be was with you! The minute we heard what happened I nearly went crazy trying to find out if you were alive!" His voice was cracking with emotion, and he swallowed hard several times, trying to get the lump out of his throat. "When Leo said I could go, I picked up my backpack and left, and I swear, Donna, I didn't hesitate or stop or sleep until I was at your side. If there were red lights for international flights, I would have made that pilot fly through them. If you had died, it would have been my fault for sending you there, and I wouldn't have been able to live with myself. I stood in the hospital and watched them operate on your pulmonary embolism, and spent the entire time reliving the night of the Illinois primary on the first campaign, when my father died of the very same thing!"

Donna's face had gone white. "Josh…" She knew how much guilt he harbored about Joanie, about his father, about Rosslyn. She knew that his compulsive need to protect the people he loved was part of this, part of what had kept him from letting her go, but it had also helped drive the wedge between them. It was the first time he had openly articulated to her just how much he did care – and the fact that he remembered her comment about red lights brought tears to her eyes. Josh kept going.

"Only this time it was you, and I couldn't even begin to imagine how to be – me – without you! And then you – _left _– and I couldn't look out for you, and I have been miserable every day because you weren't there – and you had to go and work for _Russell_, of all people! For Will! For a candidate who isn't up to the job, for a candidate that puts us in direct conflict with one another! You deserve more than working on some ridiculous, doomed campaign for Bingo Bob! I deserve more than that from you!"

Donna felt as though someone were squeezing her lungs; she couldn't breathe. She had asked for this; she had known how upset and wounded he was over her departure and what he saw as her disloyalty. He needed to say these things in order for them to heal, but hearing him made her physically ache. She wanted to curl into a fetal position and hide; she wanted to beg his forgiveness for hurting him and coming so close to leaving him forever. She had not really done anything wrong, she knew that, but it tore at her heart to see him this way. If they were going to form some kind of equal relationship, however, he absolutely had to stop thinking of her as a subordinate.

"I deserved more than I was getting working for you, too," she said firmly, even though her anguish was evident to both of them. Josh felt as though the painful truth of those words stabbed him in the chest. "I need to be independent from you, Josh; you know I have the skills to help run this campaign, this party, whatever Democratic administration we end up with. I'm only one person, but I can do a lot." Her voice softened a little as she added, "You taught me everything I know, after all."

Josh took several deep breaths, trying to get his emotions back under control. He ran his hands through his hair and walked in a circle in the tiny closet. He paused when he was facing the back wall, his back turned away from Donna. _There's probably every staffer in the West Wing listening outside the door_, he thought, then found it absurd that he would even think about eavesdroppers in the middle of this conversation.

He took another breath and came around to face Donna again. "Not everything," he said huskily. "I never taught you how to handle me. You just seemed to know how to do that."

Donna saw that his eyes were wet, and her own were damp and blurry as she looked at him. She tentatively reached a hand up to his face, cupping his cheek with her long fingers. "Josh, if I had – " She stopped and began again. "If anything had happened to me, it wouldn't have been your fault," she said tenderly. "It was the fault of a terrorist cell that indiscriminately hates the U.S. and its citizens and is looking to cause chaos in whatever way they can. You've had so many terrible things happen to people you love, but _none_ of them were your fault." She fastened her blue eyes on his brown ones, hoping that her conviction and sympathy would help him believe.

He brought his hand up to hers, turning his cheek more firmly into her hand. "It always _feels_ like it's my fault," he said, so quietly she could scarcely hear him.

The tears spilled over then, and trickled down her cheeks, but she managed a small smile for him. "You wouldn't be Josh Lyman if you didn't feel responsible," she said, her voice trembling. "But you can't keep anyone from _living_, Josh, from making their own choices and their own mistakes."

"I know," Josh said softly. "I know that now." He laced his fingers through hers and brought their hands down from his face, until their linked hands were resting between their bodies. They looked at each other for a long moment.

"I know how afraid you were, and you are. I'm still afraid, too," Donna said. "You have to trust me, Josh. You have to trust that when I have my own job, my own agenda to complete, a different boss to please, it doesn't mean that I'm moving away from you personally, or that I'm taking my friendship or my love away from you."

Josh's eyes lit up at her last words, and he grasped her other hand in his own, so he was holding both. "Donna," he breathed.

"I could never do that," she whispered.

They leaned in swiftly at the same moment, their lips coming together eagerly. Josh released Donna's hands in order to frame her face, and Donna slid her hands up into the hair at the nape of his neck, twining her fingers around the red-brown strands. Their kisses were warm, passionate, intense – _Smoldering_, Donna thought in a split second of coherence – and everything she had ever thought they would be. Josh gathered her into his arms to bring their bodies closer, and then nudged her backward ever so slightly, so their bodies were resting against the closet door while they continued to embrace. Donna felt as though she was melting; they had both wanted this for so long, so long . . .

Josh was almost clinging to her; he couldn't get Donna close enough to him. He ran his hands up and down her back, through her hair, over her face. He had come so close, too close, to losing her completely, first in Gaza, again in Germany, and for a third time when she joined the Russell campaign. He felt as though he had been pulled back from a high precipice. The last few months without her had been so painfully blank and cold. He believed in Matt Santos, but he had walked around every single day since Donna left with an emptiness in his heart that never went away. Kissing her now, that emptiness filled up and overflowed with warmth so sweet it frightened him. He wanted her in his arms forever; he didn't want to have to live another moment without her as his best friend, his lover. Assistant be damned. He just wanted her, his Donnatella.

When they finally pulled their mouths apart, both of them panting, he buried his face in her shoulder, tightening his arms around her yet again. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for everything, Donna."

She pulled away just enough to be able to look at him, and her eyes were full of compassion, but also – _guilt?_ Josh thought wonderingly. "You're forgiven, if you can forgive me, too."

His brow furrowed a little. "What do I have to forgive you for?" he asked softly, bringing up a hand to touch her cheek. "You didn't do anything wrong, Donna. You've been right about everything you said tonight; I should have given you your independence long ago, and I didn't because I was too selfish and self-centered to give you up. I should have told you that you were an amazing assistant and that you deserved to move on to better things, and that I am so proud of how exceptional you've become. I should have told you how I felt when we were in Germany – I should have told you how much I love you and that I didn't want to live without you, the first time you woke up."

Donna felt tears sliding down her cheeks again. "I love you, too," she choked, trying to speak past the tightness in her throat. "I always have. And I'm sorry for the way I left; I'm sorry for hurting you; I just didn't know how else to do it, and I needed to go. I'm sorry about Gaza; I'm sorry for almost - "

"Don't say it," Josh silenced her, putting his fingers over her lips. "Don't you dare say it, Donnatella Moss. That wasn't your fault in any way. If I don't get to blame myself for that, neither do you. And I understand why you left, and why you left the way you did. I should have listened to you. I forgive you for anything you think you did, and if the hurt of the last year was what it took to bring us here, I would do it all over again."

Donna sniffed, trying to control her tears, and she turned up her mouth in a trembling smile, nodding her understanding. Josh wiped away her tears with his fingers.

"You looked like an angel when I finally woke up in Germany," she whispered. "I'd never seen quite that look before, and you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."

Josh's eyes were dark as he looked at her. "So were you."

Donna smiled a genuine smile then, for the first time in months, and at the sight of it Josh couldn't help but kiss her again. He stroked her face, smiling a little.

"We're going to have to wait a bit, you know," he said. "You have a job to finish."

The gratitude in Donna's eyes for that comment almost overwhelmed him. "You have one, too," she reminded him, smiling again.

Donna could hardly believe what she had heard. With one sentence he had let her go as his assistant; he had acknowledged her independence and her capabilities, her need to prove herself apart from him. What was left was _them_, his "we" that thrilled her through every vein and artery.

"I know we're going to have to wait a little, Josh," she said, running her fingers through his hair. "We're going to have to be very careful not to talk about the campaigns when we do talk – although I know we won't talk much - and be careful about what we do in front of other people, at least until the primaries are over."

He nodded. "We will be. It'll be fine." His face broke into a grin that melted Donna's heart; after that terrible, heart-wrenching expression earlier it was like watching the sun come out. "After all, we've had plenty of practice pretending to be nothing but professional around one another, right?"

Donna grinned back and gave a little nod. Josh gave her one last, long, sweet kiss and turned to go out the closet door.

"Josh," she said. His had paused on the knob, and he turned to look at her, his eyebrows raised. "I can wait forever as long as I know you're waiting for me, too."

His brown eyes warned her all the way down to her toes. The corners of his mouth lifted. "Yeah."

Donna's heart soared. Her Josh was back; the Josh that could use "Yeah" as an answer to a thousand different questions – and this one contained a thousand answers in one little word. He opened the door, checking quickly for observers, and left. Donna drew a long breath, feeling the cracks and chasms in her heart repair themselves with the knowledge of Josh's love.

The draught was over.


End file.
